Saturday, 4 August 2012

Whale watching, but where are the whales?

I was very excited recently to organise a whale watching trip as a school holiday excursion with my son. This year there are record numbers of humpback whales migrating up the Eastern Australian coastline to escape the Antarctic winter.

It was an amazing foggy morning(the view from our accommodation)

The fog was starting to rise by the time we got to Newcastle harbour.

Newcastle harbour has 8 tugs

Nobby's Head

Mist rising from a patch of Pacific Ocean

Mr Wicker may have played with this image

It turned into an amazing day

Except for one small thing, we didn't see any whales.

15,000 whales are travelling up the East Coast of Australia and we didn't see one! Luckily I took photos of some birds to pass the time.

Pied Cormorant (Phalacrocorax varius)

Yellow-nosed Albatross (Diomedea chlororhynchos)

Even the sea gulls played nice

Silver gull (Larus novaehollandiae)

But still no whales.... So they took us to see some seals, well a seal as it turned out. I learnt that Australian Fur Seals will often rest on the rudders of ships anchored at sea. It makes sense for them I guess, they don't have to bother to swim in to the coast.

31 comments:

Oh what fabulous pictures, but what a shame you didn't see a whale. The seal is lovely though - we saw seals swimming when we went to the Isle of Man last year, and it felt really special. My Snapshot is at http://goo.gl/S95dh

Newcastle harbour is beautiful Louise. Walking along the new esplanade area and out along the breakwall is a lovely thing to do a sunny winter's day. Sorry you missed the whales...a good excuse to do it all again soon :-)

I agree with everyone else that the boat ride itself and the beautiful views were worth the trip. I would love to see some whales. I have to stop reading Saturday Snapshots because my list of places I must visit keeps growing. Here's Mine

Here on the California coast we see whales in the late winter/early spring (January - March). I've gone out on whale watching trips where we didn't see a single one. Other times we've been lucky to see a few. Pretty amazing!

I love the flatness of the water in your first shot. It's so still it feels like something big is coming.